It was International Women’s Day on Wednesday 8 March – a day of celebrating women’s achievements across the globe.

And here in Sheffield, for the first time, the council dedicated its social media feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to those women from the city who have achieved great things and inspire others to succeed.

In just 24 hours, the hashtag #womenofsteel2017 achieved 3.3m impressions across social media and reached 346,475 unique users – which is more than half the population of the city.

Of those people reached, 65 per cent of users were women and 35 per cent were men.

Councillor Julie Dore, leader of Sheffield City Council, said: “It’s great that so many people engaged with our first ever International Women’s Day drive on social media.

“I hope that people were inspired by the stories that they read and perhaps learned something new about women as talented in different fields as Grace Clough, Nancy Fielder and Rachel Cutting.

“I also hope that the campaign might have shown girls and young women that females from Sheffield, just like them, can be hugely successful, can achieve their goals and can excel in their chosen fields, if they have the passion and dedication to aim high.”

The women featured in Sheffield City Council’s International Women’s Day social media campaign were:

June Shepherd – Carer

Debjani Chatterjee MBE – Author and poet

Nancy Fielder – first female editor of the Sheffield Star

Paulette Edwards – BBC broadcaster

Jessica Ennis-Hill – sportswoman

Grace Clough – sportswoman

Sara Saxon – Charity Worker

Helen Sharman – Scientist and first British person in space

Rachel Tomlinson – UoS Director of Learning Mechanical Engineering

Rachel Cutting MBE – Principal Embryologist at the Jessop Wing

Dame Pamela Shaw – UoS Neurologist

Prof Vanessa Toulmin – UoS, Producer Festival of the Mind

Anne Wilson MBE – MD Numill Engineering

Ellie Simpson – Hallam Uni PhD student and creator of CP Teens, for young people with cerebal palsy